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  <title>Chapter 1</title>
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            <h1 class="title">Chapter 1</h1>
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          <h2 class="subtitle">Belah</h2>
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      <p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width"><span class="first-letter first-letter-y">“Y</span>ou’re no goddess. Goddesses don’t let themselves get tied up, spread-eagle, and fucked into oblivion. Spread your pussy wider, little beast. If I can find heaven in that sweet place, maybe … just maybe, you can be my goddess again.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah squirmed in her bed, her thighs clenching together while the too-real fingers in her dream teased between them. A moment later they spread her open, and the touch of a man she should hate sank into her. Nikhil’s dream-touch drove her just to the edge, taunting her with crude words, reminding her with each syllable how she was his to do with as he pleased, how her orgasms were his to control.</p>
      <p class="subsq">She hovered between desire and disgust, hating herself for wanting him to find her worthy of his worship, for craving his touch and the dark freedom of the oblivion he offered.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Just when she was about to leap off that precipice into rapture, the music started. The same song had been haunting her slumber more and more frequently, and always began at the same moment in her dream of Nikhil. The beautiful notes called to her, lured her attention away until he was nothing but a mist of regret evaporating into the abyss his words had offered.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Instead of falling into the darkness with her old lover, her wings stretched wide and the music carried her higher. At the apex of her climb into the bluest sky, silken feathers caressed her skin, filling her mind with the music. In this dream, she soared and sang, the need for oblivion abandoned in favor of the attentive, winged caresses that now seemed to hold her aloft in spite of her own ability to fly.</p>
      <p class="subsq">She rarely found release in her dreams of Nikhil anymore, as though he withheld that gift from her until she submitted to him fully. She used to want what he offered, but over the years and with the knowledge of what he’d become, she was less and less inclined to take pleasure in her dreams of him.</p>
      <p class="subsq">The hands and wings that carried her into the sky in this new dream didn’t ask for submission. All they seemed to care about was how to sing her to the heights of pleasure with every soft touch and urgent plunge into her. The mysterious lover in this dream never left her hanging, but ultimately, it was only a dream.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah woke, rising reluctantly to the surface of consciousness while clinging to the last, delicious vestiges of her new dream-lover’s touch. Her body tingled and her shoulders ached pleasantly as though she’d just spent the night flying and not snuggled deep beneath the covers of her bed. She rolled over and hummed in pleasure when a similar ache twinged between her thighs. She replayed the dream in her head, working to piece together concrete images, but only able to recall impressions. Wings and music and bodies entwined. And an overwhelming sense that whoever was producing the music wanted nothing more than her happiness.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Once upon a time, Belah had wished for oblivion. Now she just wanted to go back to sleep so she could dream of flying.</p>
      <p class="subsq"><i>“Did he come to you again, sister?”</i> Aurum’s suggestive tone reached her from across the Glade, conveying her sister’s eagerness to share. Nightly visitations of the carnal variety had plagued them both ever since they’d completed the ritual with the Dragon Court to reassemble the Verdanith—the key that would allow Belah and her siblings to leave the Glade for the first time in thousands of years.</p>
      <p class="subsq"><i>“I don’t remember a man who ever made me feel so alive, so free,”</i> Belah answered, sighing at the memory.</p>
      <p class="subsq"><i>“Did he show his face yet? Or any clue as to who he is? My dream lover is still a mystery. He smells of wild, ancient places, tastes of spring rain and flooding rivers, and he ruts like a beast, but I still have yet to see his face.”</i></p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah flinched at the word “beast” and the pleasant sensations of her dream dissolved, replaced by the sting of old wounds, both physical and emotional. Even after three thousand years, she had trouble hearing that one, small word without being reminded of what it had once meant to her.</p>
      <p class="subsq"><i>“I am sorry, sister,” </i>Aurum said, a wash of her guilt flooding into Belah. Belah closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. They all had their own regrets, she knew that. But Belah’s was the only one that had created a monster that could destroy their race.</p>
      <p class="subsq">She forgave her sibling and rose, suddenly hating the softness of the bed. It served as a reminder of what her life had been like before she and her siblings retreated from the human world almost three thousand years ago. Most days the old mistakes were far from her mind, her old lover’s atrocities becoming abstract acts of evil that bore little connection to the day-to-day reality in the Glade. Yet today she couldn’t shake the memory of Nikhil’s touch and the way it encroached on the more pleasant images from her second dream, reminding her how he still affected her life even after all this time.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Her life… such as it was. Days ceased to have much meaning beyond her occasional observations of the scenes that played out within the small reflecting pool in her private corner of the Glade. The world had moved on without her, but at least the dragon race still thrived despite their enemy growing ever stronger.</p>
      <p class="subsq">The Glade itself was the perfect idyllic retreat. Its deep, wide, lush valleys surrounded by cliffs were perfect for soaring through. With its temperate weather, clear skies, and steady breeze, nothing ever changed within the Glade, which made it easy for Belah to simply exist. Her old, dark cravings had all but disappeared, thanks to the reliable <i>sameness</i> in the sanctuary she shared with her siblings. Now her only urge was to eavesdrop on the human world from time to time, though the compulsion was, more often than not, related to her desire to seek out her old lover. Three thousand years should be enough to shed unwanted urges, but Belah was immortal and such deep desires weren’t so easy to let go.</p>
      <p class="subsq">She left her room, heading to the reflecting pool in the garden outside, unable to stay away after the reminder of her past. Somehow she couldn’t help but poke at the old wounds whenever they twinged.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Settling cross-legged on a cushion at the edge of the pool, she expelled a slow breath. The blue smoke swirled across the surface, ushering ripples toward the outer rim before settling into an opaque layer just above the water. Concentrating, she parted the smoke and peered beneath at the mirror-smooth surface and the small images that took shape.</p>
      <p class="subsq">The world moved so swiftly now that only a few minutes of watching exhausted her. Humans never stopped. But she found she could focus on the slower-moving auras of the higher races, and with a small effort, use her powers to tap into their thoughts and find links to their mutual enemy, the Ultiori.</p>
      <p class="subsq">After a few minutes, her head ached, and all she’d learned was that the higher races were finally aware of the latest dragon Ascension. The Ultiori were relatively quiet. She buried her head in her hands and groaned.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“You won’t find him.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah’s head shot up. She stared across the pool at her dark-haired brother, Ked, and scowled. “What makes you think I’m looking for him?”</p>
      <p class="subsq">“You always do. Whether it’s because you still love him, or because you know he’s the key to finding <i>them</i>, I don’t know. I think it might be a little of both.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">She stared at the pool again, her gaze unfocused while the old conflict twisted in her gut. Her old lover, Nikhil—now the leader of their race’s most brutally powerful enemy—had somehow managed to locate a pair of treasures Belah herself had no access to. Treasures that were more dear to her than her own life. Her own son and daughter had been his prisoners for the last three thousand years and had yet to be located, in spite of constant searching.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“There has to be another way to find them. If I can just figure it out, we can kill him and be done with it.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Ked sat down on the other side of the small pool, resting his forearms atop his knees.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“I don’t believe killing him is really what you want, either,” he said.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah wanted to argue. She wanted to lash out the way she’d done countless times since that day three thousand years ago when their entire world had changed.</p>
      <p class="subsq">When she’d closed her eyes on her wedding night, Nikhil had been her lover, her husband. But upon waking, he was their enemy. His singular goal had shifted from her pleasure to capturing her kind, and any other higher-blooded creature who happened to get in the way of his search for her. At first he only killed, but for the last several centuries, he’d started taking captives and experimenting on them. Few ever escaped, but the ones that did always expressed how they wished for death while they were in his clutches.</p>
      <p class="subsq">As hard as it was for Belah to believe Nikhil had become that monster, she had seen enough evidence of his atrocities to break her heart ten times over. Since then, she’d spent hundreds of years alternately blaming her brother for taking her away and thanking him for the same. She had no blame left for anyone now, not even herself. What she wanted was to simply find her children.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“He fed the darkest parts of me. I know now that it was my own fault for allowing it—I indulged in him like he was a drug, and I fostered that darkness in him just as much. But after everything he has done, how can there be anything human left of him? I was a fool to think he could be empowered to survive being my mate…”</p>
      <p class="subsq">“We all wanted it to work,” Ked said. “Otherwise none of us would have agreed to the wedding in the first place. None of the races are exempt from that burden—we all had a hand in making him. We all wanted our combined magic to mean we could have human mates strong enough to withstand the power of immortal love.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">He was humoring her, she knew. He’d been doing it forever… validating her mistakes. She hated when he did that. None of the others treated her that way. She’d done this. She could own the consequences.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“And we made a monster who can’t be stopped! For all we know, he’s already picked up on the influx of magic into the world, now that the Verdanith is whole again. It could lead him straight to the Glade. If he shows up on our doorstep, I’ll have no choice but to kill him, and you know this!”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah hated how frantic her tone had become. Only a few weeks had passed since they’d agreed with the Dragon Court to reassemble the Verdanith. The magical keystone that held open the door to the Glade had been in pieces for the last three thousand years. Breaking it had been required to protect their race, but it had effectively trapped Belah and her siblings inside their magic-infused sanctuary. Meanwhile, each piece of the Verdanith itself never stayed in one place for very long, a failsafe that ensured their enemy couldn’t easily pinpoint the source of the dragons’ power.</p>
      <p class="subsq">The recently ascended Dragon Court had argued that with the new generation, they needed to increase their numbers more than ever before, and the only way to do that would be to make the Verdanith whole again and let the magic flow freely. Belah and the others had agreed, knowing their enemy’s focus had long ago shifted away from the hunt for the power source, but it was only a matter of time before the Ultiori caught wind that things had changed.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“We’re connected to the world again for the first time in ages, Sister.” Ked tapped at the surface of the reflecting pool, sending ripples across to her side and distorting the images from the human world. “And the power flows both ways now. You’ve had the dreams as well, haven’t you?”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah shook her head, prepared to deny anything of the sort. The dreams were her private escape, her secret indulgence, and they harmed no one. She’d long ago given up on the idea that she would ever have another lover, much less a mate. The dreams were all she had left.</p>
      <p class="subsq">A shadow passed over the reflecting pool, and before her eyes the surface shimmered, then coalesced into an image. Her breath caught in her throat as her secret, unconscious wish took shape. The bodies weren’t identifiable, but one was undeniably female and writhed in ecstasy surrounded by a shining blue aura. Glowing, feathered wings fluttered around and around the female shape in soundless rhythm. The image was silent, but Belah could hear the music that accompanied it in her mind, and though the image on the water failed to convey the erotic nature of the union, she felt it again deep in her core.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“Ked… this isn’t fair.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">“Just watch.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">The image faded away and a new one took shape, similarly framed with feathered wings, but this time the central figure was male and shrouded in shadow, and the feathered shape was decidedly female.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah’s gaze shot to her brother, but he was engrossed in watching the image play out. She let her eyes fall back to the water and she watched, enraptured by this secret her brother had chosen to show her. Had he been dreaming of a turul female all this time while Belah dreamed of a turul male?</p>
      <p class="subsq">“Do you hear music when you dream of her?” she asked softly. A turul’s music was known to reveal the truth in anything. If the dream magic were real, they had to believe what the songs from their sister race of falcon shifters told them. The magic of the Four Winds the turul worshipped may be at work if she and her siblings were all having similar dreams.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“The sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said with a sad smile. “There’s so much pain in her songs, though. I ache to comfort her.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">The rough, deep rhythm of Belah’s dreams sounded both anguished and deeply sexual, and resonated deep in her soul. She yearned for that male so strongly—if only he could be more than just a fantasy.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah caught movement in her periphery and watched as their other four siblings joined them and settled around the pool. After a moment, Ked’s dream disappeared and Aurum’s golden breath drifted over the surface. When the cloud parted, Belah observed a visual that closely resembled her sister’s descriptions of her own dream. After that, the others shared their dreams one by one, and the true meaning of Belah’s dream became clear to her.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Each of their dreams depicted one of their sister races as the lover—for herself and Ked, it had shown the feathered wings of turul lovers, and for the others, she’d observed the ursa and nymphaea. The revelation that they should interbreed with the other higher races went against everything Belah had believed, but could never wholly come to terms with. The four higher races each had different laws where breeding was concerned, but while they occasionally had sexual dalliances with one another, one law they all had in common was that they should not mate each other or produce offspring.</p>
      <p class="subsq">The dragons were the only race bound by their own law to only breed with humans. There had been only the six immortal siblings born, and so their Mother and Fate encouraged Belah and her brothers and sisters to take many mates among the primitive, yet plentiful mortal race that walked the earth at the beginning of time. They should not dally with each other. Mingling their magic would result in undesirable consequences. Specifically, an offspring conceived of two immortals would upset the fragile balance of magic in the world. Human genetics were simpler and would allow the dragon’s magic to prevail, producing as pure-blooded a dragon as possible with the dragon parent’s magic undiluted by any other magic.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Four of the six siblings had obeyed, knowing the risks were too great not to. But humans were too simple for Belah—too fragile for the blue dragon who wished for a mate strong enough to be her equal, not one that would be reduced to insanity the second she chose to mark him. She convinced her brother to disobey, and they had come together out of frustrated need to connect on a deeper level with someone less filthy and primitive, less prone to breaking. Belah would forever regret that mistake.</p>
      <p class="subsq">The son Belah had borne to her brother had been taken from her at birth and hidden away. Even though her old lover, Nikhil, had been human, her unorthodox marriage to him was similarly rejected by their Mother, and the daughter Belah had given birth to taken from her as well.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Any other dragon who risked breaking the laws would wind up standing trial before Belah and her siblings—together, they made up the long-feared Dragon Council—and if found guilty, would be compelled to submit and become the sexual playthings for one or more of the six immortal siblings until their sentence was complete. On the surface this sounded like a blessing, but in reality, the dragon forced to submit would be rendered incapable of finding pleasure with their mate and would complete their sentence with little sexual desire for some time.</p>
      <p class="subsq">When Belah or her siblings broke laws, they had an even greater power to answer to, and their Mother and Fate could be very unforgiving. Belah had let her dark cravings lead her astray, had wed a man who should not have been hers, and had allowed him to violate her body and shed her blood for the sake of her own pleasure, and his.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Her daughter had been taken while Belah lay unconscious after surviving Nikhil’s brutal attention on their wedding night. It didn’t matter to her Mother that she had begged him to do what he had done.</p>
      <p class="subsq">What mattered was what Nikhil had become. And now both Belah’s children were at the mercy of their worst enemy.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Were these dreams Fate’s message that those unions would finally be sanctioned by their gods? The Dragon Council itself had agreed to allow dragon pairs to mate each other without fear of punishment. There was ample magic in the world now that it would take more than a few creatures of their power interbreeding to upset things. If the higher races could now mate with each other as well, that changed every precedent.</p>
      <p class="subsq">When Belah’s pool lay placid, the six siblings looked around at each other.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“We aren’t going to find them sitting in here,” Belah’s red-haired brother, Gavra, said, stabbing his finger at the pool. “My true mate is somewhere out there, and for the first time in my entire life, I feel confident I won’t drive her crazy by marking her.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">“Any female who tolerates you is already insane,” Aurum said, earning herself a splash of water that made her laugh.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“Why now?” Belah asked. “After all we’ve been through, why weren’t we shown these visions <i>before</i> we locked ourselves away? Why couldn’t we have interbred with the other races ages ago? So much pain could have been avoided!” She caught the slightest wince cross Ked’s features and regretted her words, despite how true they were. If they’d had the freedom to couple with the turul at the beginning, rather than the dirty, primitive humans who walked the Earth, she and Ked would never have done what they did.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Aodh nodded his white-haired head. “True. And yet Fate allowed everything that came to pass. We are different creatures than we were three thousand years ago. The world is a different place, and our entire race has very different priorities now. Your faction was on the verge of civil war with Gavra’s before your wedding ritual, sister. We were well on our way to killing each other.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">“So we allowed our enemy to do it for us? How does that make any sense?”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Ever the most patient sibling among the six, Aodh, simply dipped his head. He exhaled, and his white smoke covered the pool for the second time. When it parted, Belah was shown a revolving view of the entire planet. At first, she recognized the concentration of dragon populations that she recalled from her height as Pharaoh of Egypt. Colorful, glowing clouds swirled around, highlighting each of their six Ascendancies. The clouds clashed and merged together, the sizes of each fluctuating wildly, then shrinking little by little until they were a fraction of what they’d been.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Abruptly, the clouds separated and remained static for several moments, as though time had stopped, yet the globe kept spinning. Soon the colored clouds shrunk by half in the blink of an eye, but every few revolutions of the globe, they’d double in size, then triple, before shrinking again, but never as much as they had grown. The cycle repeated over and over—grow, grow, shrink—and never again did the colored clouds clash.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“The enemy only succeeded in preventing us from growing our numbers, at first. But before the Ultiori existed, we were in true peril of rendering ourselves practically extinct. Without the threat of death from some force outside ourselves, we would not have grown so strong. Now it is finally our turn as the leaders of our race to ensure the race thrives. None of us had the freedom to truly love before, and now we finally do. We’ve been shown how to keep that love, too.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah met her brother’s eyes, acutely aware of the excitement Aodh held in check. He had his own dark secrets and had long since been forgiven for them, but like the rest of the family, he still longed for lasting love.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Glancing around at them, Belah realized how much they had all given up—entire kingdoms left to the control of their descendants while the six of them locked themselves away, all to control the flow of magic to the rest of the race. Their sacrifice for the last three thousand years had ensured there was never a clear trail of magic that could lead the Ultiori to any of the six power centers of the dragon Ascendancies. They’d given up the love of their human subjects to hide in the Glade while their race took care of itself.</p>
      <p class="subsq">Now their dreams promised something even greater than what they’d had before. None of them had ever found lasting love, even in the thousands of years before Belah’s tragic miscalculation of her own feelings. They’d only ever had each other, and Belah and Ked were the prime example of why that was never going to be enough.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“But we can’t leave the Glade unprotected…” she protested. The newfound freedom they possessed was almost unfathomable. The very idea of leaving the comfort and security she’d come to rely on for so long was understandably terrifying. But it shouldn’t border on paralyzing her… which was exactly what it was threatening to do.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“We won’t,” Ked said. “Only one of us will go at a time. The rest will remain behind until we’re certain the Ultiori aren’t seeking out the path to the entrance.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah breathed a slow sigh of relief, but the feeling was short-lived when she became aware of all her siblings’ eyes on her. The back of her neck prickled with realization.</p>
      <p class="subsq">“No,” she said, her voice quavering. “I can’t be the first to go. It shouldn’t be me!”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Ked gave her an understanding look. “It has to be you, Belah, and you know why.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Belah closed her eyes and grimaced. Her brother was right. If the Ultiori—if <i>Nikhil</i>—had discovered the shift in the flow of magic, only one thing would distract him from following it into the Glade itself. Over the centuries, he had never wavered in his craving for human women who resembled her, nor for female blue dragons. Her presence in the world would be the best deterrent to keep him away from the Glade and the source of their magic. But perhaps this was a blessing in disguise.</p>
      <p class="subsq">She opened her eyes again and fixed her gaze on Ked. “Fine, but if I do this, I am going to do whatever it takes to learn where Nikhil is keeping my babies. The turul mate I dreamed about won’t mean a damn thing if I can’t get our children back.”</p>
      <p class="subsq">Deep in her belly, her old craving reared its head. The beast that slept inside her had lain dormant for centuries, but the prospect of contact with the one man who had fed that craving roused it from slumber. A wave of nausea overtook her and she buried her head in her hands. No, she couldn’t let him have that kind of power over her again. If there was one thing her winged dream-lover had made her realize, it was that true love was coupled with joy, not oblivion.</p>
      <p class="subsq">She knew she would need to find <i>him</i>, too, if she were going to be able to endure a meeting with Nikhil. Because without the armor of the turul’s love, she would be powerless to resist the lure of that old addiction.</p>
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